Colin Meloy, Google Reader, & Rice Pudding

So I have three things to blog about today.


Colin Meloy Sings Live
For those of you who don't know, I'm a very big fan of a band called The Decemberists
The lead singer is a guy named Colin Meloy. This summer he is embarking on a solo tour. I bought tickets to see him in Boulder, CO on April 26th. Since April 29th is Jen and I's 15th wedding anniversary, I decided I would fly her to Boulder (I'll be coming in from Ohio) and meet up for a weekend of fun including stopping by the Colin Meloy concert. When I bought the tickets, Colin had just announced a new Solo album called Colin Meloy Sings Live. I preordered it and the first 300 people who did so received an autographed copy. I flew in from Ohio Friday night and went to bed. When I woke up on yesterday morning to take Sydnee to her Volleyball tournament, Jen mumbled to me as she was still half asleep "oh yeah, your Colin Meloy CD and T-shirt came". Needless to say I was pretty excited. Especially since on this CD Colin covers a song called "Ask" by the Smiths. Anyway, I'm pretty excited to have the CD and I'm super stoked to be going to spend a weekend away with Jen (and Colin).


Google Reader
I'm really liking the blogging thing. I'm able to keep up on all kinds of people that I wouldn't normally be able to, and learn all kinds of things that I may not otherwise be able to learn about. I have to credit my friend Chad Holder with really helping me make blogs work for me. He's the one that introduced Google Reader to me. I know I've mentioned it to some of you but I feel compelled to mention it again. Because it really is cool.

Google Reader is just an RSS reader. For those of you that don't know what a RSS reader is, let me explain it to you like this.... Imagine that each "post" on each "blog" you "subscribe" to is like an email. And each time the owner of a blog you "subscribe" to post a new entry, that post is emailed to you. Only instead of showing up in an email box, it shows up in your Google Reader box. That's pretty much what an RSS reader is Here is a picture of my Google Reader page.

You can see along the left side, a list of all the blogs or "feeds" that I subscribe to. The ones that are bold with a number to the right means that there are new items in that feed. In this case, DickMorris.com has 1 unread item and PhotoshopDisasters has 2 unread items. As I click on them I'm able to read the blog in the window to the right. It's a great way to stay up on all the blogs that I'm curious about and want to make sure I keep up on. It sure beats the heck out of proactively going to each blog once in a while to see if there is anything new on them.

Then what I do is I have set iGoogle as my homepage in my browser. iGoogle is like a virutal and customizeable desktop. It allows you to take various components and add them to your iGoogle desktop. See below for a view of my desktop.

You can see I have several sections of this page, all of which are customizeable. I have a weather section, a news section, calendar, sticky notes, wikipedia look up, shared documents, and of course my "Google Reader" section. Of course in addition to all this, you still have the Google web search at the top of the page. So each time I open my browser, this is the page I see. If you notice inside my Google Reader section, there are 3 listings. These are the 3 unread blogs that I have right now. As I click them, a balloon pops up within this page allowing me to read the text of the post from within this page without even having to navigate to another page (unless I want to which of course is an option). Once I've clicked on it and read the text of the blog, that entry disappears from my list of unread blogs. It's a great way to stay up on things and I really felt the need to blog about it. You can "add stuff" to this page and subsequent tabs and there really is lots of cool stuff. If you haven't checked out iGoogle you definitely should.


Rice Pudding Last but not least is my near tradition of making rice pudding on Sundays. We have a great family recipe for rice pudding that is delicious. My kids all love it when their aunt Anna makes it for them (she tends to do it anytime we're around her). I've made it occasionally on Sundays and am doing it more and more. My batches haven't been turning out too well lately, but I have to say that I today I made the absolutely PERFECT batch. When Carli came walking into the kitchen and found out I was making it, she gave me a big hug on my leg and squeezed so hard she wouldn't let go. I'm glad we can make this little tradition in our family and I'm glad the kids all like it. I just wish it would always turn out like it did today. I even used fresh eggs from our chickens in the recipe. One of the eggs I used was really big and when I cracked it open, there were two yokes in it! Weird.